Chapter X: The Church of the Middle Ages

A.D. 900-A.D. 1500

[Sidenote: Foundation of the temporal power of the Popedom.]

The temporal power of the Popes gradually increased after the ninth century, when part of the territory since known as the States of the Church was bestowed on them by Pepin, whose son, the famous Emperor Charlemagne, confirmed the donation. The change thus wrought in the position of the Popes, who to their spiritual office of Bishop now added the temporal one of sovereign, was productive of a corresponding change in the claims they made upon the submission of the rest of Christendom, and these altered claims first assumed a definite form in the eleventh century.